Measure and Benchmark Hard Drive Performance Via CrystalDiskMark

There are various factors that actually affect a hard drive’s performance such as CPU speed, RAM, motherboard, etc. Being a non-tech savvy user, it is probably quite difficult for you to have a comprehensive analysis of the overall performance by looking at the different elements. To ensure your hard drive is in good shape and to avoid any potential errors, one of the ways to test the hard drive is to check the standard performance metrics of the hard drive, e.g. the read and write speed. This type of simple benchmark uses a unified scoring system to paint a full picture but also gives an indication about your hard drive’s performance. CrystalDiskMark is a free hard drive benchmark utility like HD Tune that allows users to quick measure the reading and writing speeds of the hard drives by running a series of tests.

CrystalDiskMark is available in both installer edition and portable edition (for Windows only) and they are free to be downloaded. This tiny utility will test and measure sequential reads/writes and random 4KB/512KB reads/writes. It also allows users to copy the test result onto the clipboard. This simple utility doesn’t give you a lot of information or tell you much about your hard drive. However, periodically executed it will give you some indication whether the overall hard drive performance is far behind your expectations.